Most of us worry about things local first. Whether that is our neighborhood, state, country or history of our ethnic group. Afterwards we worry about the rest of the world and want to learn. For me, part of the rest of the world is the island of Taiwan. Besides knowing that it was pro west, while China was communist, and where on the map it is, the reality is little is known about the island. Part of the history of Taiwan is between 1895 and 1945 the island was run by the Japanese for its resources. Similar to many conquering countries, the resources were more important than the people. There are many good things the Japanese do for the world, however their methods to suppress the invading forces goes beyond most of the “developed” countries. Part of their reasoning was they saw the natives as savages and anything goes when anyone looks at other people as savages. In 1930, the native tribes held the mighty Japanese forces for 50 days in an uprising. The natives had their knowledge of the land, the ancient traditions, and machetes. The Japanese in 1930s had the complete arsenal from planes to cannons to machine guns to fully trained armies. Part of the native strategy was to capture and use Japanese guns. At the end of 50 days, the tribes were banished to a remote island.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, no one will ever know if the Japanese had treated the natives differently, different results would have taken place. For dividend paying companies the question is always what do you do about the competition? Do you crush them? do you allow a little? how much is too much? An easy method is to ensure government regulations (the thing people say there is too much of) always ensure government regulations favor the company first and makes life difficult for the competition. If the competition can spend most of their energy on defeating government regulations, it should be easier for the dividend company to defeat it in the market place (where it really counts).

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.